“Danivon, and you, Fringe, listen to me,” said Jory. “If you want no interference from what you think of as the Hobbs Land Gods, you’ll get none.”
“They’ve already interfered,” said Fringe in her chilly voice. “It’s too late. I will die rather than live possessed.” She said it as though she commented on the weather.
Jory shushed her. “It’s not too late. They’ll put you back precisely as you were and leave you alone. It’s just … they, it had no reliable human index, no one much to cross-check with and very little time.”
“They’ll put me back dead?”
“They’ll put you back however you like! Dead. Alive. Reconstructed as you were before the gaver got you. However.”
“Enslaved,” said Fringe emotionlessly.
“Not,” said Jory in a dispirited tone. “Not enslaved any more than you already were. You will still be enslaved by yourself, by custom, by opinion, by all the hierarchies you have accepted from others or built for yourself, but you’re used to that.”
Fringe merely stared, disbelieving, but Danivon sat up straighter.
“How?” he asked. “How do I get … unpossessed?”
“Simply think of yourself as you were,” Jory said. “The device will help you do it. It won’t cheat. It has no desire for power. It has no ego to assert. It is simply what it was designed to be, a communication device. Because most people like to think of themselves as better than they are—kinder and more generous—the usual net effect of the device is an improvement in people’s ability to get along with one another. There is more trust, more faith, as Asner could tell you. Nonetheless, if you spend some time remembering incidents from your life and how you felt and reacted toward them, you’ll become more and more what you were. The Arbai Device has no use for grieving, rebellious participants.”
Danivon looked only partially convinced.
“How can you prove this?” Fringe demanded. “How would I know it had left me?”
“Are you aware, now, of how Nela feels? No, don’t look at her. Are you aware?”
Fringe nodded, unwillingly. She was. She knew exactly how Nela felt, and Bertran, and Danivon….
“It is the device informing you. Say to yourself now that you do not wish to know how Nela feels. Keep in mind that you do not wish to know about others. Shortly, you will find you do not know.” Jory spoke with rueful and unimpassioned conviction.
“When you are as deaf and unperceiving as you were before, you will know it has gone. When you feel yourself a solitary creature, walled inside yourself, you will know you are alone.”
Fringe turned away, believing she had heard the truth.
“But I always …” murmured Danivon. “I could smell …”
“For you, Asner and I will think up a different test,” said Jory, almost angrily. “But I assure you, you will not be an unwilling part of anything!”
“You haven’t really met Alouez,” Cafferty murmured, changing the subject. “You haven’t met Haifazh, who has only just come.”
The girl nodded, the woman nodded. Danivon merely stared at them, not even hearing their names, as he mentally took an inventory of Danivon as Danivon knew Danivon to be. Seeing his vacant expression, Jory pushed him toward a bench against the sun-warmed wall. He sat there, concentrating on himself-qua-himself, running over the catalog of his faults and virtues, breathing through his mouth, trying not to smell anything or think anything that might make the terror rise up once more.
Jacent was still reciting a catalog of events he had experienced in Tolerance. He went on and on, concluding, “… and it isn’t just Tolerance. All the people of Elsewhere are dying. Children, women, men, old people. All dying. Boarmus said the dragons were his last hope. So what should I do now?”
Jory said firmly, “It’s unfortunate that Boarmus placed any hope in dragons. The Arbai won’t do anything, young man.”
“What’s happening?” Danivon blurted, suddenly aware that what she had said had to do with him. “Who won’t do anything?”
“Tell him,” Curvis demanded, giving Danivon an almost-contemptuous look. “Tell him all about it. He doesn’t know all about the Arbai Device yet?”
“What more should I know?” cried Danivon.
Jory seated herself and folded her hands in her lap. “The device is a living thing. When it is small, it’s simple, without thought or volition. As it grows larger, it draws on the minds and consciousness of every intelligence in the net and becomes synergistic, predictive, even creative. It can draw on the dreams and imaginations of the minds it includes. It can evolve syncretic symbols to interpret among different life forms. It can convince all its parts that they see or feel or hear or smell certain things. It can create a reality that all its parts accept.”
“It did that on Hobbs Land,” said Asner. “Hobbs Land was dull, but we settlers longed for marvels, so it drew on our imaginations to create marvels for us. Some of its creations—the ones that could be grown, like trees or beasts—were real. Other creations, geographical ones, were sort of … illusory, at least, to start with. Eventually they became real too, though it took a long time to make a canyon or a mountain range by moving a molecule at a time. Eventually, when our world was threatened, it drew on our experience and its own growth potential to create a defense.”
“It interfered with you,” snarled Curvis. “That’s all Danivon needs to know. It took you over! And it’s now taking us over! Taking him over.”
Jory waved a bony fist at him. “Though I have repeatedly said that does not happen, it is beside the point Asner was making! He’s saying the device can actually create or destroy in response to the needs of the intelligences it includes.”
Danivon cried suddenly,
